Imgur26 | 100 Tuffi flies through Wuppertal
from the series 100 photos - 100 stories
Tuffi - the elephant that has gone down in history. Find out what's behind this picture in this article.
The elephant girl "Tuffi" was born in India in 1946 and was sold to the Franz Althoff circus in Germany three years later. The elephant was very small and docile with a balanced character and therefore the ideal advertising figure for the traveling circus. She took streetcar rides in various cities, drank the holy water fountain in Alt?tting empty, went on a harbor tour in Duisburg and visited the city director of Oberhausen.
The "Wupper jump"
On Friday, July 21, 1950, circus director Franz Althoff and his twelve-year-old son Harry boarded the suspension railroad with Tuffi at 10:30 am. Contrary to what had been agreed in advance, photographers and reporters crowded into the already overcrowded compartment after them. Statements about the cause and course of the subsequent jump into the Wupper are contradictory. Harry Althoff attributes the elephant's leap into the Wupper to the cramped conditions in the compartment combined with the many noises and movements behind Tuffi's back. There was squeaking and shaking all over the train, which probably triggered a panic attack in the elephant. As a result, Tuffi didn't listen to the stop signal, broke through the window of the suspension railway compartment and fell about 10 meters into the Wupper after less than 2 minutes' ride. She landed relatively softly on a muddy spot and survived the fall almost unharmed. The picture you see is a photomontage, as nobody was able to take a photo during the commotion. Circus director Franz Althoff and the department head of the Wuppertal transport company were subsequently sentenced to fines for negligent endangerment of transport and negligent bodily harm.
